Kerovbe Patkanian was born in
Nakhichevan-on-Don (today part of
Rostov-on-Don) on into a noted Armenian family of scholars and educators. His father, Petros Patkanian, was a priest, and his mother was the daughter of the educator and author
Harutyun Alamdarian. He was the first cousin of writer
Raphael Patkanian. He then graduated from the University of Dorpat and the Main Pedagogical Institute in Saint Petersburg in 1857. In 1861, he joined the staff of the Department of Armenian Literature of the
Saint Petersburg Imperial University, first as an (adjunct) professor and as a full professor after 1872. He headed the Department of Eastern Languages from 1861. He is credited with establishing Armenian philology as a subject of comprehensive study at the university; the "Petersburg school" of Armenian studies associated with Patkanian eventually included well-known scholars such as
Nikolai Marr,
Nicholas Adontz,
Joseph Orbeli and others. From 1872, he also served as the chief censor of Armenian publications of the Saint Petersburg Censorship Committee, in which capacity he is credited with playing a positive role in the development of Armenian publishing. Patkanian studied Armenian manuscripts in the libraries of Etchmiadzin, Tiflis, Venice, Munich, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. He published a number of works of medieval Armenian literature, including for the first time the works of
Gregory of Akner (1870) and Mkhitar of Ani (1879). He also published new editions of the works of
Mekhitar of Ayrivank (1867),
Sebeos (1879),
Faustus (1883), and
Tovma Artsruni (1887), which were of a higher quality than previous publications. He translated into Russian the works of
Movses Kaghankatvatsi (1861), Sebeos (1862),
Ghevond (1862), Mekhitar of Ayrivank (1869), Petros di Sargis Gilanents (1870), Maghakia Abegha (1871), Tovma Artsruni (1887), and the Armenian geography
Ashkharhatsuyts (1877, with the original Armenian text). He also compiled and translated information about the Mongols from Armenian histories (2 vols., 1873–74). According to Meri Saghian and Maxim Katvalian, Patkanian's translations "are characterized by closeness to the original text, a high level of scientific rigor, [and] they are accompanied by additional information, comments and annotations." He also wrote bibliographies and studies of medieval Armenian authors and their works. In his
Opyt istorii dinastii Sasanidov and the work
O mnimom pokhode Taklat-Palasara k beregam Inda (On the supposed campaign of Tiglath-Pileser to the shores of the Indus, 1879), Patkanian addressed a number of key questions in the ancient and medieval history of the Middle East. Patkanian also studied the
Urartian cuneiform inscriptions discovered in Armenia and wrote a number of works about them. In his doctoral dissertation
Issledovaniye o sostave armyanksogo yazyka, Patkanian studies the origin, development and other characteristics of the Armenian language using the methods of historical and comparative linguistics. Patkanian considered
Classical Armenian to be the ancient spoken language of the
Ayrarat province of
Greater Armenia, serving as the official or common language of the Armenian people during the existence of the ancient Armenian kingdom and as the Armenian literary language from the fifth to the nineteenth century. He contributed to the study of Armenian dialects in his work
Issledovaniye o dialektakh armyanskogo yazyka (Study on the dialects of the Armenian Language, 1869), for which Armenologist H. Dashian called him "the father of Armenian dialectology." These works include stories, fairy tales, and oral traditions in the dialects of Mush, Khoy, Agulis, Julfa, and
Karabakh. Patkanian considered the Armenian dialects to be the descendants of the ancient tribal languages of Armenia. In his view, Classical Armenian did not experience new development down to the nineteenth century and maintained its original grammatical structure, and it was not the living, spoken language of the Armenian people from the fifth to the nineteenth century. In his work
O meste, zanimayemom armyanskim yazykom v krugu indoyevropeyskikh (The place occupied by the Armenian language among the Indo-European languages, 1879), Patkanian concluded that Armenian is a unique representative of an unknown branch of the
Indo-European language family located between the Iranian and Slavic languages. He collected materials for an Armenian explanatory dictionary and a dictionary of Armenian personal names (
Materialy dlya armyanskogo slovari, parts 1–2, 1882–84), but this work remained unfinished. In a number of articles, he argued against what he viewed as unnecessary
purism in the Armenian language. Patkanian died in Saint Petersburg on . == Selected works ==